March 2003 Archives

There's nothing like a 15-2 win on opening day.

In their first opening day under manager Dusty Baker, the Cubs took advantage of opportunities and New York Met miscues. Corey Patterson had a day (2 home runs, 7 runs batted in) that hopefully begins a season of fulfilled potential. Kerry Wood pitched strong to pick up the win.

The Cubs lead the National League Central.

Even after one game, that feels good to type.

Talkleft posts about another case where a U.S. citizen is being detained under proceedings that are completely secret.

Does the government have a case against Mike Hawash? We may never know. Our government should not have the ability to use secret warrants and subpoenas against citizens.

The American people should no longer tolerate the Bush Administration's on-going efforts to obstruct the commission investigating the September 11 attacks. Funding promised to the commission has yet to materialize. The New York Times' editorial writers observe that:

Reasonable people might wonder if the White House, having failed in its initial attempt to have Henry Kissinger steer the investigation, may be resorting to budgetary starvation as a tactic to hobble any politically fearless inquiry. The committee's mandate includes scrutiny of intelligence failures and eight other government areas.

Ruben Navarrette has some questions for Vice President Dick Cheney. He wants to know how a subsidiary of the company Cheney ran before joining the Bush Administration keeps getting invitation-only contracts with the government. As Navarrette explains:

It is a Halliburton subsidiary -- Kellogg, Brown & Root -- that landed on a short list of companies invited by the US Agency for International Development to bid on what could grow to be a $900 million contract to rebuild Iraq. That's the same Kellogg, Brown & Root that was recently awarded, by the Defense Department, the contract to put out fires at oil fields in Iraq.

That secrecy must not be allowed to stand. The American people may accept an irresponsible wartime tax cut. But I still believe that they will not abide war profiteering. Or favorable treatment to a company who ended up providing stock that upon its sale handed the Vice President $22 million after he left Halliburton to assume the Vice Presidency.

The bidding process for these jobs needs to be open and transparent. Congress should insist upon it. Since the Republicans likely will not, it is time for some Democrats to hit the talk show circuit. In case they need the help, Navarrette provides some simple questions that the Vice President should answer:

Are the new contracts for Halliburton Cheney's idea of reciprocity? If not, why was the process done by invitation only and not opened to other bids? And why was all this done in relative quiet?

Moreover, why hasn't the vice president's office been more forthcoming in trying to clear up any confusion about any benefit that Halliburton might derive from having its former CEO now sitting to the right hand of the president? Why has Cheney's office typically referred inquiring reporters from The Washington Post to Halliburton, only to have Halliburton refer them back to the vice president?

And given that these are tax dollars we're talking about (lots of them), why isn't there more transparency in the whole process?

I know Vice President Cheney hates being forced to answer questions from other branches of government or release information to U.S. voters. If columnists like Navarrette can point out these important questions, someone in Congress needs to start asking them.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) writes that the Bush Administration is ignoring real threats to our security. He also notes that it would be easier to pay for these (and other) necessary security measures if the president's irresponsible tax cut were eliminated.

What does Nadler suggest? Purchasing the remaining excess nuclear material stored in former Soviet facilities, searching all containers that come through our ports, requiring the Coast Guard to search any ship that gets within 200 miles of our borders, and providing anti-missile systems to our commercial airline fleet.

Will we wait until our ports are used to attack us to put necessary security measures into place?

Ronald Brownstein is unimpressed with the Senate moderates' success in halving President Bush's irresponsible tax cut. As he describes the moderates' $350 billion tax cut package:

For the deficit, that's better than the alternative. But only in the sense that it's better to be hit by a car than a truck.

First, Washington is already facing mammoth deficits. Private congressional estimates project that, excluding the money raised for Social Security, the federal government could run a deficit of as much as $530 billion this year, by far the largest ever. Under Bush's plan, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects huge deficits every year through the next decade.

Second, those deficits are undermining Washington's last opportunity to improve its fiscal position before the baby boom's retirement explodes the cost of Social Security and Medicare.

Third, cutting taxes during a war -- not only the conflict in Iraq but also the broader struggle against terrorism -- is unprecedented in American history. It amounts to asking the next generation to fund the national defense through a higher national debt.

But Brownstein gets at the bigger picture with his second point. The first baby boomers qualify for early eligibility Social Security benefits in less than five years. Because of the Bush Administration's economic policies, and the Democrats often acquiescence to them, our nation is unprepared for the fiscal pressures the baby boomers' retirement will cause.

Instead of making it easier for future taxpayers to fund the baby boomers' retirement, we are adding to the bill because of our selfishness. This policy, in effect, is all about leaving our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren with the check for our spending today.

Is this the Republicans' real definition of compassionate conservatism? Or family values?

Douglas Pike notes with proper disgust that:

While Americans in uniform risk their lives, politicians in Washington are still cutting taxes - especially for the country-club crowd - and dropping shock-and-awe debt on future generations.

Members of the media seem to be asking more questions about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's competence these days.

As the Daily Kos notes, however, some people (including conservative Robert Novak) have been asking questions about Rumsfeld and reporting the military leadership's concerns about him for nearly a year now.

Slate's Fred Kaplan notes that our military leaders would have been prepared for some of the Iraqi tactics in this war had they not overruled the commanders who were leading the opposition during a war-gaming exercise last summer.

As Kaplan explains, the war games became little more than a scripted scenario where the United States was guaranteed a victory. He writes:

Officially, the war game was a great success; the theories were proven sound. However, on Aug. 12, as the game was winding to a close, a retired three-star U.S. Marine Corps general named Paul Van Riper wrote an e-mail to some of his friends, casting grave doubt on this conclusion.

Pentagon war games pit "Red Force" (simulating the enemy) against "Blue Force" (the United States). In this war game, as in many war games over the years, Van Riper played the Red Force commander. In his e-mail (which was promptly leaked to the Army Times then picked up, though in much less detail, by the Guardian and the Washington Post), Van Riper complained about Millennium Challenge 02, writing that, "Instead of a free-play, two-sided game … it simply became a scripted exercise." The conduct of the game did not allow "for the concepts of rapid decisive operations, effects-based operations, or operational net assessment to be properly assessed. … It was in actuality an exercise that was almost entirely scripted to ensure a Blue 'win.' "

As Kaplan argues, our military should be encouraging "Red" commanders to use whatever tactics they can instead of scripting victories.

Yes, that might mean that tidy war theories may be exposed as imperfect. But it would also better prepare our troops and commanders for what they might see on the battlefield.

(Thanks to Archpundit for the link.)

Cragg Hines is annoyed with the Bush Administration's efforts to justify its horrendous tax cut package by tying it to the war with Iraq.

This is not the first time this White House has used overzealous rhetoric to try to win a political fight. As Hines reminds us:

The repeated efforts of spokesman Ari Fleischer to tie the tax cuts to jobs for returning military personnel is no less a joke. His approach is part of the variegated sales pitch for the president's budget proposal. It's reminiscent of the ever-shifting reasons that the administration offered for war against Iraq. Almost all of the points had merit, but the oscillating rationales made it seem that the White House didn't quite believe firmly in any of them and was trying to see if yet another new one would fly with doubters at home and abroad.

Fleischer's scam also recalled President Bush's own sordid attempt last fall to declare that senators who were not buying his approach to anti-terrorism hook, line and sinker were "not interested in the security of the American people."

Halving a bad tax cut proposal, after all, still leaves a bad tax cut plan on the table.

The Houston Chronicle wonders in an editorial why energy companies that have stolen from consumers around the nation -- and helped create California's energy crisis -- never have to say they are sorry.

Is the Bush Administration being too optimistic about the prospects of creating a democratic Iraq in a short period of time? Former Baltimore Sun foriegn correspondent Gene Oishi thinks so.

He makes an important point about Iraq's reconstruction that many optimists in the Bush Administration seem unwilling to recognize:

The U.S. role in the reconstruction of Germany and Japan after World War II was an outstanding example of magnanimity and statesmanship, but the United States did not introduce the concept of democracy or modern economic and industrial practices in either country. To use the German and Japanese experience as case histories for what is possible in Iraq and in the Middle East in general is an exercise in self-delusion.

To point to Japan and Germany as examples of what can be accomplished through war and rehabilitation in the Middle East is unrealistic; it is an analogy not supported by history.

Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland wonders why the State Department is "suddenly missing-in-action."

David Broder turns again to the budget war being waged against the poor by Congressional Republicans and the Bush Administration.

Budgets are a statement of priorities and values. Republicans in Washington have made it clear that tax cuts for the affluent are fine, even if they are passed on the backs of low-income families across the nation. While people were focused on events in Iraq, Congress this week passed unacceptably harsh budget resolutions. As Broder writes:

Neither the House nor the Senate budget truly addresses the needs of the nation. Neither one has the degree of fiscal discipline needed in a country at war and mired in a struggling economy. Either one would add close to $2 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

But there is a big difference between the two versions. The House budget provides twice as big a tax cut, principally for affluent Americans, as does the Senate's. And the House version would deal low-income Americans, particularly children, a much heavier blow. If the House version -- or something close to it -- prevails, expect dire consequences for many Americans.

Rather than throw a lifeline to the states and these people, the House budget would cut federal funding for Medicaid by $92 billion and also reduce other vital programs. Veterans' benefits are slated to take a $14 billion hit. A similar cut is required for the earned-income tax credit, a subsidy for the working poor. Food stamps would be reduced by $13 billion, school lunch and other child nutrition programs by $6 billion. There are also multibillion-dollar reductions in store for such programs as foster care and adoption assistance and child support enforcement.

We now know the Republican Party's answer.

I have just made a post to the Political State Report about the following topic:

As California's continuing budget crisis leaves the state short on cash and requiring short-term loans to make it through the current fiscal year, more legislators are taking a serious look at making changes to portions of the state's famous Proposition 13 tax cut initiative. While Prop 13's provisions reducing residential property taxes remain sacrosanct, other parts of the initiative are now in play.

Former Senator Gary Hart (D-Colo.) has started a blog. He joins former Vermont Governor Howard Dean as a 2004 presidential candidate to embrace this technology.

Make no mistake, this is the start of a significant trend. Blogs will eventually be seen as a campaign necessity. They provide an easy and inexpensive way for candidates to talk about their message in a more personal (or personal-sounding) way.

It is going to be interesting to watch how these candidate blogs evolve over the next few months. One can also expect the rise of significant campaign opposition blogs to respond to candidate statements and events in real time. It is part of the natural evolution of internet campaigning.

This is going to be fun to watch.

(Thanks to Taegan Goodard's Political Wire for the link.)

Now what will the tax cut cult try?

They finally got their wish and the Congressional Budget Office tried dynamic scoring the federal deficits away.

But it did not work. As this Washington Post editorial explains:

Now the CBO has tried it their way -- and the administration's contention that the country will magically "grow its way" out of deficits as it cuts taxes still turns out to be more or less a fairy tale. The CBO, headed by new director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who arrived straight from the White House Council of Economic Advisers, analyzed President Bush's tax and spending proposals using various models to forecast the overall effect on the economy. The report -- the CBO's first foray into dynamic analysis -- showed "small" supply-side effects, "either positive or negative," from Mr. Bush's budget. Its models indicated that the proposals would raise -- or, in most scenarios, lower -- economic growth by less than a percentage point on average in the next 10 years.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin may want to update his resume.

We know, after all, how much President Bush appreciates it when his economic assumptions are not backed by his appointees. Evidence or not, such contradictions are simply not tolerated.

Jules Witcover hopes that the Bush Administration will embrace its recent small steps away from the optimistic bluster characterizing its statements in the weeks and months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. As he notes:

But the administration cannot honestly refute that it sought at the outset to convey the impression that its invasion of Iraq would be a lightning bolt achieving a swift "regime change."

It may be time to start collecting Bush Administration statements about how our troops could be expected to be greeted as liberators and scores of Iraqi military units would surrender.

We must not allow the White House to revise history or blame the media for the optimistic message they sent to help sell this war to the American people.

Michael Kinsley explains how the United States is being quite selective in its defense of international law. We embrace those norms when convenient and subvert them when we find them inconvenient. He explains:

At the beginning of Gulf War II, we forgot . . . we forgot . . . we forgot . . . oh, yes: international law. We forgot international law once again. When the U.N. Security Council would not play ball, we declared that our own invasion of Iraq was justified as a sovereign act of long-term self-defense against potential weapons of mass destruction, by the human rights situation in Iraq and by the hope that removing Saddam Hussein will start a chain reaction of democracy and freedom in the Middle East. Don't bother us with your petty i-dotting and t-crossing: We're thinking big here.

But that kind of talk is so very last week. Come to think of it, it was just last week. Today our head's in a very different space and we're extremely concerned about violations of international law. Specifically, we're deeply offended by Iraq's violations of the Geneva Conventions in showing U.S. prisoners of war on TV. We're also angry that some Iraqi soldiers are waving the white flag in fake surrenders and violating the rules of war in other ways.

But the United States needs to understand how our selective flouting of international law reduces our national security and can lead our citizens being harmed.

Matt Miller exposes the unseemly profiteering and politics going on right now while our military men and women are fighting in Iraq.

We're supposed to be bound together as a nation in an important cause. Yet every day brings fresh news of cozy profiteering.

Halliburton, the vice president's former firm, has been awarded the first multimillion-dollar contract to rebuild Iraq. Richard Perle, one of the intellectual architects of our Iraq strategy, stands to make $725,000 from Global Crossing if his chums at the Pentagon OK a big deal.

None of this may be illegal. I'm even prepared to hear someone make the case that these deals shouldn't concern us. But not everything that is legal is right. And if that's true in peacetime, how much truer should it be now? If there's nothing unseemly about these arrangements, I'd like to hear the President himself defend them.

But the most surreal disconnect between Washington values and American values remains the President's tax cut. The Senate has now voted to slice the President's $700 billion-plus tax cut in half. A triumph of fiscal sanity, we're told. If this view becomes accepted, it will only prove how corrupt our standards of public judgment have become. [emphasis added]

The Senate's cut of the proposed tax cut was not the act of political courage some suggest. When facing $400 billion annual deficits, a $350 billion tax cut is also unsustainable.

Using the war to justify any tax cut, moreover, is simply outrageous.

James Pinkerton explains how the gap that has grown between rhetoric and reality during the early stages of this Iraqi war .

Richard Cohen reports on Secretary of State Colin Powell's plans to seek a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the war with Iraq is concluded.

Cohen was naturally skeptical that the Bush Administration would follow through on the idea given its notable slant towards Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the past. He writes:

Before the Israelis and the Palestinians can get their act together, however, the Bush administration will have to do the same. At the moment, the State Department, which used to conduct American foreign policy, has been outgunned by the Pentagon, the National Security Council (now with Elliott Abrams) and Dick Cheney, a vice president with very strong views about the Middle East. Suffice it to call them pro-Sharon.

For this reason, a certain amount of skepticism is in order. So I asked Powell who besides him in the administration favored a plan that would mean going to the mat with Sharon. "The president," he responded quickly. I asked if he was certain of that.

Given the new dangers we have unleashed through the world through our attack on Saddam, we need to turn off the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I fear, unfortunately, that we will soon have many others with which to deal.

While I have no doubt that the United States military will eventually defeat Saddam, we have learned that one of our military planners' new theories was somewhat overoptimistic.

No, that's a bit too kind. It was wrong. As Slate's Fred Kaplan notes:

Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters on March 22, "This will be a campaign unlike any other in history—a campaign characterized by shock, by surprise, by flexibility …"

But what if the enemies are not shocked or surprised—or if they are at first, but then quickly recover and launch their own campaign of shock and surprise?

The problem, in the end, were the misrepresentations made by the Bush Administration about how easy the war would be to win. Compared to other wars through history, this war is going quite well.

But the expectations were not based on what happened in history. They were based on misstatements made by leading Bush Administration officials.

Misstatements that must be remembered.

Well, it is two years too late. But federal regulators are now admitting that the California energy crisis was brought about by market manipulation.

Better late than never, I suppose. But, the fight is not over. As Governor Gray Davis (D) argues:

"Show me the money," California Gov. Gray Davis declared. "Where's the $9 billion that we've been asking for, for two years? That is when I'll finally feel vindicated, when we get the money back that these energy companies stole from this state."

David Broder calls attention to another set of first responders that are not getting the support they deserve: those who serve in our nation's military reserves. He writes about Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who still serves in the Naval Reserve while in Congress:

Kirk put his finger on a challenge that Pentagon officials and many others in Congress recognize. While much has been said -- and rightly so -- about the needs of the "first responders" in homeland defense, the police, firefighters and emergency medical crews, the nation also is lagging in its obligations to the reservists who increasingly are the first responders in any military mission.

When retired Rear Adm. Thomas Hall, the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, testified before a Senate Armed Services subcommittee last week, he noted that the 1,190,000 reserve and National Guard forces "now comprise almost 50 percent" of the U.S. military. Pentagon figures show that 212,617 National Guard and reserve members had been placed on active duty as of last week. As Hall said, reserve personnel "provide the majority of force protection to military installations worldwide. . . . It is now routine for the Army Guard to plan and execute Bosnia missions. They are scheduled to relieve the active Army in Kosovo," where they already provide most of the logistics support.

More than one-third of all reservists take a pay cut when they are called to active service. Their jobs, while in theory guaranteed, are less secure than they should be. Small businesses have great difficulty filling spaces for employees that will return on some unsure future date.

If our military is going to be so reliant on reservists, policies must be put into place to make that transition easier. As Broder notes:

In a time when few American civilians are being asked for any sacrifice, the burdens of these reservists and their families call upon the conscience of the country.

Here we go again: the Bush Administration's attempts to hinder the 9-11 Commission are continuing.

Now the White House is balking on a reasonable supplemental budget request made by the Commission as it does its work. As Stephen Push, one of the leaders of the 9-11 families told Time magazine:

"They've never wanted the commission and I feel the White House has always been looking for a way to kill it without having their finger on the murder weapon."

What's coming over the next few days? Retired General Wesley Clark maps out a costly scenario.

(Thanks to Atrios for the link.)

Slate's Jack Shafer explains why Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not the best person to lecture anyone about complying with the Geneva Conventions.

The Houston Chronicle's editorial board takes a necessary look at our nation's fiscal position. The outlook is bleak.

This past week the U.S. House of Representatives approved a $2.2 trillion budget for fiscal 2004. The measure preserves the $726 billion in tax cuts the president wants over the next decade. It makes no provision for the cost of the war and the expensive rehabilitation of Iraq.

Our children and grandchildren are being asked to pick up the tab of our domestic and foreign policies, notwithstanding the president's lofty State of the Union rhetoric:

This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. (Applause.) We will confront them with focus and clarity and courage.

The president and his supporters in Congress need to be candid concerning their budget decisions and the red ink they will spawn. In a time of war, courage is needed on the home front, as well. While the politicians might tremble at the thought of transparency, they needn't doubt the willingness of American patriots to make the sacrifices demanded for the good of the nation.

Since President Bush is going to fight for his domestic priorities, I hope Democrats will fight for theirs...

One of the most vile attacks made in the months of debate leading up to the Iraqi war is that those who opposed it were unpatriotic or hated America.

Now Robert Novak finds that he needs to defend himself against this hateful charge, made in the supposedly mainstream National Review by David "Axis of Evil" Frum. Novak writes:

We are accused of advocating ''a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies.'' Concluding, he writes of us: ''[T]hey are thinking about defeat, and wishing for it, and they will take pleasure if it should happen. They began by hating the neo-conservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country.''

Dissent is not tolerated. Even among conservatives.

Jules Witcover writes about how Democrats have fitfully moved behind the president now that the troops are engaged in war with Iraq.

In both the House and Senate, Democrats niggled over the language of the resolutions to make certain they put equal or greater emphasis on support for the troops fighting the war as on backing of the president.

The wording of the Senate resolution, which "commends and supports the efforts and leadership of the President, as Commander in Chief," implies a distinction between the constitutional hat Mr. Bush wears as head of the American military and the one he wears in his role as the nation's, and his party's, political leader.

So does the House resolution, which expresses "unequivocal support and appreciation of the nation to the President as Commander in Chief for his leadership and decisive action in the conduct of the military operation in Iraq as part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism." In fact, many Democrats continue to question whether the president ever made a persuasive case for a link between Iraq and the war on terrorism. [emphasis added]

But one wonders why the House Democrats ended up voting for a resolution that seems to tie the war with Iraq and the war on terrorism. That is a case that still has not been made by the White House.

From my latest post to the Political State Report:

Are California voters angry enough that they will consider major reforms to the state's budget process? The initial sponsors (the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Health Access, and the League of Women Voters) of an ambitious new initiative effort hope so. The proposed changes target one of Proposition 13's requirements: the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget or raise taxes.

I hope President Bush does not become the latest world leader to betray the Kurds. Slate's Timothy Noah has been tracking this subject the past few weeks and now thinks that:

It's still conceivable Bush will find some motive to screw the Kurds after the war starts. But the likelihood that the Kurds will get screwed before the war is now very remote.

Now I know that some conservatives now argue that any criticism of President Bush now is unpatriotic. But let me quote that noted radical, Thomas Friedman, about the Bush Administration's recent inadequate foreign policy conduct:

The president says he went the extra mile to find a diplomatic solution. That is not true.

On the eve of the first gulf war, Secretary of State James Baker met face to face in Geneva with the Iraqi foreign minister — a last-ditch peace effort that left most of the world feeling it was Iraq that refused to avoid war. This time the whole world saw President Bush make one trip, which didn't quite make it across the Atlantic, to sell the war to the only two allies we had. This is not to excuse France, let alone Saddam. France's role in blocking a credible U.N. disarmament program was shameful.

Friedman now says that he will devote his column to figuring out how to "turn these lemons into lemonade." Given our national history, and this president's failures in Afghanistan, this subject is of the utmost importance.

The only possible way this war can end with the United States safer is if we are serious about our commitment to rebuild Iraq and protect its people. We must make good on this promise.

The Boston Globe's Scot Lehigh looks at British Prime Minister Tony Blair and suffers a case of leadership envy. He writes:

As war approaches, it's not George W. Bush's solemn Monday speech to the nation that sticks in one's mind, but rather the strange Sunday summit in the Azores. Watching Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, it was hard not to suffer from a case of leadership envy. In that most crucial of moments, Blair was calm, articulate, and forceful. In contrast, Bush seemed peevish, dismissive, and impatient.

Even if you believe that, in a dangerous world, force must remain an important instrument of foreign policy, Sunday's tableau didn't present a portrait of a US president who one could comfortably say had exhausted the realistic diplomatic possibilities before drawing his line in the sand.

Blair took a position that was unpopular with his people initially and led them. He faced his opposition. (No phony press conferences for him.) He articulated his position. Given the history of the Anglo-American alliance, Blair had to support the United States. He, unlike some, understands the obligations of alliance and diplomacy.

Lehigh now argues that the Bush Administration must do all it can to improve Blair's internal position. I hope this is an obvious conclusion for Bush and his advisors. Blair's enemies are already looking to pounce, and Bush owes him.

Update: London Observer columnist Will Hutton offers this excellent analysis of Tony Blair's motivations.

Do you remain confident about our government's claims that our homeland security is improving after watching one man in a tractor make downtown Washington, D.C., a parking lot the last three days?

James Pinkerton explains the scope of the gamble President Bush is taking in implementing the preemption doctrine:

If he wins, he'll be claiming the biggest pot of all - unchallenged sway over the planet. If he loses, well, let's put it this way: the stakes get higher in the era of weapons of mass destruction. But in the meantime, he has a strange way of playing his cards.

As Pinkerton notes, four of the world's eight nuclear powers are against this new policy. He wonders:

Will those countries be building more weapons, or fewer, in the years to come? It's worth recalling that in 1945, the American explosion of atomic weapons over Japan did not "shock and awe" the Soviets into submission. It inspired them into a nuclear arms race - and other countries, too.

A Baltimore Sun editorial today reminds readers that:

Rarely is war simply a test of arms. Every war has a political context, and the aftermath of every war is nothing but political. There is every reason to hope for and expect an American triumph on the field, but this administration has demonstrated an especially inept hand at international politics, and that's why the potential repercussions of this war are so disturbing.

Paul Krugman recaps how the world arrived at this point, and what recent events could mean for future debate in the United States:

There is a case for getting tough with Iraq; bear in mind that an exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998. But it's not a case that the Bush administration ever made. Instead we got assertions about a nuclear program that turned out to be based on flawed or faked evidence; we got assertions about a link to Al Qaeda that people inside the intelligence services regard as nonsense. Yet those serial embarrassments went almost unreported by our domestic news media. So most Americans have no idea why the rest of the world doesn't trust the Bush administration's motives. And once the shooting starts, the already loud chorus that denounces any criticism as unpatriotic will become deafening.

So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims, without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge.

More important: perhaps they will vow never to make a similar one again when dealing with this president.

E.J. Dionne writes about one of the "great defects" in the Bush Administration's run-up to war: its failure to talk candidly about the sacrifices that are coming. Dionne argues:

Supporters of going to war have regularly chastised their opponents for refusing to face the reality of Saddam Hussein's threat and the need for radical measures to eliminate it.

Now it is their turn to face reality. From a desire not to unsettle the delicate foundations of their political coalition, supporters of a grand new American role in reordering the world have held their tongues about the cost of their enterprise. They have not said what price or burden or hardship they are asking of their fellow Americans, especially of their own supporters. Perhaps Bush will lead by breaking the silence and ask more of us -- and of himself.

One should not hold his or her breath waiting for these answers.

The world changed last night with President Bush's speech. The new preemption doctrine is now in full effect. In Iraq, the White House has found the site for the policy's initial implementation. The Iraq hawks' decade-long efforts to find a rationale for their new policy have finally reached their end.

I really hope I am wrong about the likely consequences of this gamble.

Looking at this new world, David Broder makes two important points in his column today. First, he acknowledges that the Bush Administration has been after the end of the Saddam Hussein regime since September 2001. As Broder writes:

Skeptics may argue that the United States has yet to produce convincing evidence of a link between the Baghdad regime and the al Qaeda terrorists. But the link exists in the mind of the commander in chief, and he is prepared to act on that conviction.

What we know is that the imminent prospect of preemptive war with Iraq has damaged U.S. relations with much of the world -- opening rifts with major trading partners such as France and Germany, with Russia and China, and even with neighboring Canada and Mexico. The aftereffects in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world cannot be gauged.

This is not what Bush sought or anticipated -- any more than he anticipated, when he launched his course of large-scale tax cuts, the giant deficits that now loom for the United States, threatening the economy and vital domestic programs. The members of Congress who so willingly endorsed his Iraq policy last autumn will be debating his budget this week. It behooves them to consider the consequences carefully this time.

I am headed to the California State Democratic Convention this weekend, so opportunities to blog may be limited through Monday morning.

Have a good and safe weekend!

Thomas Friedman today offers another excellent column about the Iraq situation. It offers several important observations, like this one:

My main criticism of President Bush is that he has failed to acknowledge how unusual this war of choice is — for both Americans and the world — and therefore hasn't offered the bold policies that have to go with it. Instead, the president has hyped the threat and asserted that this is a war of no choice, then combined it all with his worst pre-9/11 business as usual: budget-busting tax cuts, indifference to global environmental concerns, a gas-guzzling energy policy, neglect of the Arab-Israeli peace process and bullying diplomacy.

Friedman offers a suggestion for a bold diplomatic move that would put the onus on the Arab world and the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese. I hope the Bush Administration will try it, or something like it.

Now Senators are frustrated with the Bush Administration's refusal to offer many details about its plans to rebuild Iraq following the potential upcoming war. Incidents like this one from yesterday do not inspire confidence. Washington Post reporter Peter Slevin explains:

Senators from both parties worried aloud that the administration has not devoted as much attention to post-conflict peacemaking as it has to war plans. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) expressed frustration that the Pentagon declined the committee's request to produce retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, coordinator of the new office of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance, or one of his deputies.

The senators' spirits did not improve when Lugar read a note during the hearing announcing that the Pentagon officials were briefing reporters on reconstruction plans at the same time Garner had been invited to testify. A Senate staff member said the Pentagon called the committee during the hearing to say the briefing was underway.

"I'm terribly concerned that we are not as far along as we should be at this juncture, considering that we may just be days away from military action," Dodd said. "But, frankly, none of us really knows because the administration, unfortunately, has been extremely vague. The time has come for the administration to be fully candid with all of us, and to listen to what we and others have to say about its plans and timetable for action."

Probably not. Why start now?

The Washington Post editorial page hopes that northern Virginia Democrats will seek to find a replacement for Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.).

As the Post editorial explains, Moran's ethical problems revealed last year should have been enough to spur Democrats to seek a replacement. His comments last week blaming American Jews for the possible war with Iraq should now prove the final straw.

I endorse that view. His ethical problems and irresponsible comments are simply unacceptable for a Member of Congress. Questioning the motives behind the Bush Administration's drive to war with Iraq is appropriate. Even necessary. But, as the Washington Post editorial explains:

It's perfectly legitimate to debate Israel's place in U.S. Mideast policy, or Israel's own behavior; charges of anti-Semitism shouldn't be permitted to stifle criticism. It's not anti-Semitic to stand up for Palestinians' human rights. It wouldn't necessarily be anti-Semitic -- just demonstrably wrong -- to argue that Mr. Bush's Iraq policy is motivated primarily by a desire to protect Israel. But the argument moves from merely wrong to patently offensive when it attributes to Jews or "the Jewish community" a single view and a nefarious influence. Some Jews and some non-Jews, in Israel and America and Europe, support disarming Iraq; some don't. In their respective countries, they try to make the arguments on their merits. Mr. Moran and his ilk should do the same.

Paul Krugman has locked himself into a fixed-rate mortgage. Why? Because he has well-founded fears about what is going to happen to interest rates in the near future.

They are going to rise, especially if President Bush gets his tax cut package through Congress.

Two years ago the administration promised to run large surpluses. A year ago it said the deficit was only temporary. Now it says deficits don't matter. But we're looking at a fiscal crisis that will drive interest rates sky-high.

A leading economist recently summed up one reason why: "When the government reduces saving by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises." Yes, that's from a textbook by the chief administration economist, Gregory Mankiw.

But what's really scary — what makes a fixed-rate mortgage seem like such a good idea — is the looming threat to the federal government's solvency.

That may sound alarmist: right now the deficit, while huge in absolute terms, is only 2 — make that 3, O.K., maybe 4 — percent of G.D.P. But that misses the point. "Think of the federal government as a gigantic insurance company (with a sideline business in national defense and homeland security), which does its accounting on a cash basis, only counting premiums and payouts as they go in and out the door. An insurance company with cash accounting . . . is an accident waiting to happen." So says the Treasury under secretary Peter Fisher; his point is that because of the future liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, the true budget picture is much worse than the conventional deficit numbers suggest.

Of course, Mr. Fisher isn't allowed to draw the obvious implication: that his boss's push for big permanent tax cuts is completely crazy. But the conclusion is inescapable. Without the Bush tax cuts, it would have been difficult to cope with the fiscal implications of an aging population. With those tax cuts, the task is simply impossible. The accident — the fiscal train wreck — is already under way.

That is not the Bush Administration policy. Future generations will be quite unimpressed with our lack of planning and our inescapable fiscal irresponsibility.

Especially if Krugman correctly predicts -- as I fear he does -- the likely policy solution future governments will be forced to implement.

David Broder is not impressed with what we learned about President Bush or the White House press corps during the president's press conference last week.

When it comes to the president, Broder saw more of the scripted, repetitous man we came to know on the campaign trail.

As candidate and as president, Bush has demonstrated his belief that persuasion for him is often reduced to simple repetition. His is the rhetoric of the sound bite. It works well on the campaign trail, where different audiences in different locales need to hear the same message. However, when the same point is made over and over in the same words in a single news conference, his rhetoric tends to sound scripted, and the effect can be disquieting.

Of course, part of this problem was the result of the questions. The White House press corps, as a group, did not distinguish themselves with their queries. Broder adds:

I was astonished and dismayed that in the first opportunity to quiz the president in four months, not one question was asked about the shaky economy or the out-of-control federal budget. The very next day came news of the largest monthly jump in unemployment since the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and an official estimate that Bush's budget proposals would add $2.7 trillion to the national debt in the next 10 years. An economically cushioned set of reporters seemingly couldn't care less about this looming disaster. Talk about being out of touch!

E.J. Dionne makes several important observations about the current Iraq debate:

But the wreckage the administration's Iraq policy leaves in its wake cannot be blamed on France alone. The loss of allies and the turn of public opinion in so many democratic nations against us reflect fears that the United States is going to war not just to rid Hussein of weapons but on behalf of a grand theory. The theory sees unfettered American power as capable of remaking the world. That's certainly bold. It's also dangerous.

The paradox is that creating the more democratic world we seek requires more than power. It demands alliances, institutions and trust. Doing the right thing the wrong way for the wrong reasons could squander all three.

I just received Charlie Cook's weekly "Off to the Races" column via e-mail. It will not be pleasant reading for Karl Rove.

(You should subscribe to Cook column's e-mail service. It is free, just click here for more information.)

Cook writes:

Bush's "re-elect" numbers may sound alarm bells for his team. In the latest survey, when asked, "If the election were held today, would you definitely vote to re-elect Bush as president, consider voting for someone else or definitely vote for someone else?" 38 percent of registered voters said that they would definitely vote to re-elect Bush; 37 percent said that they would definitely vote for someone else; and 22 percent said that they would consider voting for someone else. On this question, Bush's re-elect support in January and February ran 41 percent, with someone else between 31 percent and 32 percent.

The White House's problems? Iraq, the economy, and a sense that the nation is headed in the wrong direction.

If we go to war with Iraq (it almost seems silly to write that disclaimer at this point, but play along), one can expect at least a temporary bump in President Bush's poll numbers. The fundamental problems, however, will remain.

Michael Shellenberger and Adam Werbach write that it is time for Democrats to propose a program to end our reliance on foreign oil.

One issue above all others has the potential to excite both conservative and liberal wings of the party on national security, and that's freeing America from its dependence on Middle East oil. Voters understand that our reliance on this oil increases America's vulnerability to terrorist attacks, wars and economic turbulence. They know that oil isn't behind all of the problems in the Middle East but that it exacerbates enough of them to demand a response. And across the board, voters fear our president doesn't take the issue seriously.

Democrats today have an opportunity to inspire the country with a hopeful vision, akin to a new Apollo Project, one that weans America off Middle East oil in favor of solar and wind energy in 10 years while creating millions of new jobs.

Democrats have proven that they can lose to Karl Rove with small ideas. It is time to get right at one of President Bush's weaknesses and propose a new energy economy, one worthy of the 21st Century.

I called for an energy Apollo program in this space on October 22, 2002. It is time to end our dependence on oil. It is not only bad for the environment. It is a national security risk.

Matt Miller argues that Democrats are making a large mistake by trying another "Mediscare" campaign against President Bush when they should be trying to enact a larger policy change.

Democrats cannot win a policy debate about which party has the better prescription drug coverage plan. Democrats need to think larger. It is time to take the president's idea and expand it. It is time to use the president's plan to argue for universal health care coverage.

Forcing this health debate to be about universal coverage instead of merely about prescription drugs would be a political and substantive winner for Democrats. If the debate is simply about who's got the better prescription drug plan, Bush will successfully blur the issue. Democrats need to realize that the old "Medi-scare" won't beat a "compassionate" President with the megaphone of the White House like it routed that congressional meanie, Newt Gingrich.

But if Democrats play a little jujitsu and make Bush's Medicare logic the rationale for universal health coverage, Bush will be stuck. He won't match them because he'd have to give up his tax cuts for the rich to cover the uninsured. Democrats could use Bush's indefensible inconsistency here - seniors, yes; 40 million other luckless Americans, no - to drive home the differences in the two parties' priorities.

Centrist Democrats endorsed a plan similar to the one Miller describes years ago. Nearly one-third of all Americans under the age of 65 went without health insurance at some point over the past two years. That is a national crisis that requires a response.

At least from the Democrats.

The Rittenhouse Review's James Capozzola has lately given Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) grief on a nearly daily basis. With good reason.

(Aside: Capozzola really should get in the race against Specter next year. As a former resident of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I hope there is a spirited race.)

But Specter does deserve credit for being one of the few Senators trying to force some accountability on the FBI and its leadership. Robert Novak reports:

It defies credibility that FBI Director Robert Mueller did not reply to an e-mail letter from agent Coleen Rowley, whose previous whistleblowing earned her Time's person-of-the-year status. She was not alone. For an even longer period, Mueller ignored a written complaint from a U.S. senator.

Last Tuesday, the very day a frustrated Rowley gave her latest whistleblowing letter to two newspapers, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania confronted the non-responsive FBI chief face-to-face. Rowley contended that the FBI is unprepared to cope with a terrorist onslaught following a U.S. attack on Iraq. Specter was concerned that Mueller had not quickly corrected the FBI's unduly heavy burden of proof that played a part in the intelligence failure leading to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Apart from the substance of this criticism, Mueller's decision to ignore a world-class whistleblower and a particularly tenacious senator suggests not all that much has changed at the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover's arrogance toward the outside world permeated the bureau's culture and has not been obliterated. Even after 9/11, local police chiefs complain the FBI still resists sharing information.

It is time to clean house. Starting at the top with Director Mueller.

Jules Witcover observes that while President Bush may have been subdued during his press conference last week, his basic argument remained unchanged. The different tone did not indicate any change in substance.

Once again, the president said "multiple intelligence sources" showed that the Iraqi dictator was continuing to develop such weapons, but once again he offered no new proof. Nor did he explain, beyond saying he had "good evidence," why Iraq is so imminent a threat to the United States that the U.N. inspections had to be cut off rather than let them go on in return for winning broader U.N. support.

Instead, he merely restated his justification for pre-emptive action absent any new U.N. Security Council resolution to attack. It's his job, he said, not only "to protect America" but also to "protect and defend the Constitution" - which, as we know, says Congress "shall have the power ... to declare war."

Whether it serves the short or long-term national security interests of the United States or not. Whether we were prepared for the cost of rebuilding Iraq or not. Whether our homeland security improvements were ready to protect us or not. Whether our public health infrastructure was ready to handle the inevitable retaliatory attacks or not.

In a better world, our Representatives and Senators would be demanding answers to these questions. Or at least debating them.

Cynthia Tucker notes that many Americans now represent the worst threats to freedom of speech. She cites the recent experience of an anti-war protestor as an example:

Nevertheless, for the offense of exercising her rights as a citizen of one of the world's greatest democracies, she was spat on, threatened and yelled at. One man went so far as to denounce her for wearing a cross around her neck, "insinuating I was not a Christian," she said.

As she wrote in an op-ed essay for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "I was frightened that my neighbors were going to hurt me because I dared to express my opinion. This could not be happening. Not in America, right?"

Our nation is in increasing danger of failing that test.

Former Senator Gary Hart, a co-chairman of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, argues that attacking Iraq detracts from the war against terror.

Iraq is a detour from the war on terrorism. Hussein mysteriously morphed into Osama bin Laden, or vice-versa. But at least we have the advantage -- for the moment -- of knowing what country Hussein is in. Instead of wondering how many Americans will be sacrificed to urban warfare in Baghdad, we should be concerned with equipping and training police and firefighters in Baltimore, Dallas and Denver. Right now, first things are being put second and third as our leaders obsess about an isolated Iraq.

Perhaps Hart cannot win the Democratic presidential nomination. But I hope he runs nonetheless. Democrats need to have a serious debate about national security and homeland defense issues. If Hart is in the race, he would push that necessary debate forward.

David Broder, thankfully, devotes another column to the Bush Administration's continued dismissal of the fiscal crises affecting a majority of state governments.

The combined deficits facing the states are now estimated to reach $80 billion. The cutbacks and layoffs to result will overpower federal stimulus attempts (even if you agree with the questionable assumption that the Bush tax cut plan is about creating a near-term stimulus).

Broder explains the disconnect he sees in Washington, D.C., discussions about government budget policy:

While the lobbyists seated around me whispered to each other their hopes of attaching their favorite features to the administration bill, Democratic members were peppering Snow with questions, asking how the country could afford all this when the budget this year is at least $300 billion in the red and no one -- certainly not Snow -- could offer even a horseback estimate of what a war with Iraq and its aftermath might cost.

But the president's man was not fazed. "We can well afford the war," Snow said, "and we'll put it behind us."

That nonchalance -- the brushoff to nitpicking questions about the massive debt being handed to our children and grandchildren -- is what makes the atmosphere in Washington so mind-boggling these days. (emphasis added)

If you are working on a state budget issue and are angry that education, social service, transportation, or other spending cuts and tax increases are on the way, remember to turn at least part of your anger to the White House. The federal government's refusal to acknowledge this problem is simply inexcusable.

The Washington Post editorializes about the need for President Bush to conduct more press conferences.

Despite the swirl of events at home and abroad, Mr. Bush had not held a solo news conference since Nov. 7, two days after the midterm election, and this was only the eighth of his presidency. President Clinton had held 30 such events at this point in his term, and the first President Bush had held 58.

That's a startling difference, and White House communications director Dan Bartlett was straightforward about the reason. "If you have a message you're trying to deliver, a news conference can go in a different direction," he told The Post's Mike Allen. Which is precisely the point. News conferences, especially if held with some regularity, offer an opportunity for reporters to pose questions on an array of topics, not all of which the president may be eager to address, particularly before a live national audience. This may not be the most pleasurable activity for presidents, but it's an important part of a well-functioning democracy.

Given the negative reaction to his most recent press conference performance, one should not expect to see another with President Bush in the near future. That should not members of the media and the American people from asking for them.

I've just added a post on the Political State Report. Here's an excerpt:

The Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters looks at the fundamental question that will affect California politics and campaigns at every level for the forseeable future: "What do we want in government and what are we willing to pay?"

I was wondering how long Congressional Republicans were going to allow the president to shift the blame to them for inadequate homeland security funding.

Now we know. There is now an at least temporary fracture in the united Republican alliance to mislead the American people about the state of homeland security funding.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports:

A senior Republican lawmaker, firing back at President Bush for recent statements blaming Congress for underfunding emergency workers, accused the White House of factual inaccuracy and inadequate communication.

In an extraordinary departure from the public unity that has characterized White House relations with congressional Republicans, House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) wrote to urge White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to "be responsible" and "move on from this pointless and harmful debate" over legislation passed last month that included money for "first responders" involved in homeland security.

But Democrats should keep this issue alive and force votes on homeland security funding measures that Bush and his allies would rather shelve in favor of tax cuts for the affluent.

This is a fight the Democrats should embrace. It is not just politically wise. It is necessary to protect the nation.

Atrios was on this story early. Now it has landed on Page 1A of the Washington Post.

Okay, so it is on page one on newspapers' traditionally lowest circulation day. That means there is all the more reason to call attention to it. Joby Warrick reports:

A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.

Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.

ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration claim -- made twice by the president in major speeches and repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday -- that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Also, ElBaradei reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors.

"There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities," ElBaradei said.

Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away -- including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said.

Atrios yesterday quoted a Joe Conason post that asked a tough question and made a key observation about this situation:

Assuming that El-Baradei's accusation about the Niger uranium hoax is correct, what remains to be discovered is where the phony documents originated and why it was created. Like the plagiarized "intelligence report" put out by the British and cited by Secretary of State Powell at the UN last month, this is a matter for investigation by the appropriate committees of Parliament and Congress. Or it would be, if those honorable legislatures possessed the necessary independence for intelligence oversight.

Pretty minimal. This executive branch must be the first in human history not to require legislative oversight.

The Congressional Budget Office issued its new federal budget projections yesterday. They needed much red ink.

Without the Bush tax cut plan, the government would be projected to run a $900 billion surplus over the next 10 years.

With the Bush tax cut plan, the government is projected to run $1.8 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years.

A $900 billion surplus turned into a $1.8 trillion deficit. During a time that includes the last few years before the baby boom generation begins reaching the early eligibility age for Social Security benefits.

Speaking of Social Security, the figures above actually do not tell the most accurate story.

These numbers are the amounts including the supposedly off-budget Social Security surplus. How bad do things look if we exclude the surplus generated mostly by excess Social Security payroll tax revenues?

Take a look at the chart on page 17 of the CBO's report. It outlines the coming fiscal horror show.

Without the president's tax cut, and nearly $2.6 trillion in Social Security surpluses over the next decade, the baseline budget projects $1.68 trillion in on-budget deficits over the next 10 years.

With the Bush tax cut plan, and again excluding the Social Security surpluses, the on-budget deficits projected for the next decade total $4.39 trillion.

$4.39 trillion.

There is nothing like passing our problems onto future generations, is there? Even when you are a president who has promised not to do so.

To repeat, this is an economic policy brought to you by a president who promised in his recent State of the Union that:

This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. (Applause.) We will confront them with focus and clarity and courage.

Editor and Publisher reporter Ari Berman has compiled a list of 13 questions he wishes reporters would have asked the president during Thursday's press conference.

It is an excellent list. Given the Bush Administration's record, however, you should not expect to learn the answers.

(Link thanks to Jim Romenesko's Medianews.)

Three out of four cities report that they are less able to meet their financial needs this year compared to last year. In response to this finding, the National League of Cities on Friday issued a plea for a national discussion of the problem.

In recognition of the serious, long-term nature of the fiscal crisis facing governments at all levels, the National League of Cities today called on the President and the nation’s governors to join city leaders in convening an Emergency Summit on America’s Fiscal and Economic Crisis.

“Today we ask the President and the governors to join us in addressing the crisis we face, which goes beyond current economic conditions,” said [New Haven, Conn., Mayor John] DeStefano. “We are looking at serious problems — a declining partnership between local, state, and federal governments, a system of public finance that is outdated, unfair, and inadequate, and popular sentiment that government does not work.”

“We are all in this together. We need to renew our partnerships and work together better to deliver the services that our citizens need and deserve.”

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) outlines the dangers of unchecked media consolidation in a Seattle Times op-ed.

Congress made a huge mistake with the 1996 Telecommunications Act. It must not repeat it.

I have just made my first post to the Daily Kos' collaborative Political State Report blog. I am really grateful for the opportunity to join the group there. Here's the excerpt:

The Sacramento Bee reports that "California's pre-eminent Republican signature-gathering firm" will not help gather signatures in a potential recall campaign targeting Gov. Gray Davis (D). It comes down to concerns about future business if the firm helps with the recall.

So, now President Bush and his foreign policy apparatus has taken to making threats to Mexico in order to get its vote on any Iraq resolution in the United Nations Security Council.

Threating Mexico. A country that should be our partner and close ally. Of course, a country that is getting used to broken promises and ill-treatment from its neighbor to the north.

Paul Krugman outlines recent developments:

But Mexico's seat on the U.N. Security Council gives it a vote on the question of Iraq — and the threats the Bush administration has made to get that vote are quickly destroying any semblance of good will.

Last week The Economist quoted an American diplomat who warned that if Mexico didn't vote for a U.S. resolution it could "stir up feelings" against Mexicans in the United States. He compared the situation to that of Japanese-Americans who were interned after 1941, and wondered whether Mexico "wants to stir the fires of jingoism during a war."

Incredible stuff, but easy to dismiss as long as the diplomat was unidentified. Then came President Bush's Monday interview with Copley News Service. He alluded to the possibility of reprisals if Mexico didn't vote America's way, saying, "I don't expect there to be significant retribution from the government" — emphasizing the word "government." He then went on to suggest that there might, however, be a reaction from other quarters, citing "an interesting phenomena taking place here in America about the French . . . a backlash against the French, not stirred up by anybody except the people."

And we wonder why people around the world are tired of our nation's foreign policy arrogance.

Jules Witcover analyzes the current games being played by state Democratic parties as they try to advance to the beginning of the presidential nominating process. As states try to move ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire, one might wonder if the first caucus and primary of the 2004 race may end up being held in 2003.

As Witcover notes, one thing is certain:

The 2004 Democratic race, starting earlier than ever before with more states voting earlier than ever, will be a sprint to the party nomination, not a marathon.

E.J. Dionne focuses on the "3-to-6 gap". This gap is the period of time between the end of most school days and the end of parents' work days. Filling this gap should be a national priority.

(Aside: It might be nice to talk about how it makes no sense for a modern industrial economy to continue to insist on a school schedule developed to support the nation's agrarian era. But one step at a time.)

Dionne notes that President Bush supports the idea rhetorically. But, as with much of his "compassionate conservative" agenda, the support does not extend to the Administration's actual budget requests. Dionne explains:

Some politicians understand it, too. "After-school programs keep kids safe, help working families and improve academic achievements," said the most prominent one of them all. "They engage students in service and ensure that youth have access to anti-substance abuse programs. For America's working parents, they provide the confidence that their children are well cared for after the school day ends."

Excellent points. President Bush made them in a letter he wrote on Oct. 4, 2002, to a group called the Afterschool Alliance. So why, exactly, has the president proposed to cut federal spending on after-school care by 40 percent? Under Bush's budget, federal spending on 21st Century Community Learning Centers would drop from $1 billion this year to $600 million next year.

Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat who worked with Bush on the education bill, notes that the program now covers about 1.5 million kids. The program's advocates estimate that at least 500,000 would be affected by the cut.

This cut, alas, perfectly embodies what's wrong with the way this administration is doing business. The dissonance between the president's moderate, compassionate words and his spending priorities is jarring.

Compassionate conservatism sounds good on the stump. Perhaps it is time, however, to hold the president and the Republicans responsible for not governing by their words.

The United States has not adequately prepared for the aftermath of war with Iraq. This failure makes an humanitarian disaster possible. Refugees International President Kenneth H. Bacon and International Rescue Committee President George Rupp explain in a Washington Post commentary:

Despite months of planning by the Bush administration to respond to the humanitarian challenges that could follow an attack against Iraq, preparations for dealing with displacement, injury, illness and food shortages remain inadequate. If current problems continue, the suffering caused by war could be amplified by lack of aid resources and coordination.

The most urgent need could be food. The United States boasts that it has shipped nearly 3 million humanitarian daily rations to the region to help feed Iraqis. But individual meal packets will feed only a tiny portion of Iraq's 24 million people, and for just a few days. A United Nations official recently called U.S. and U.N. preparations to feed the Iraqi people "grossly inadequate." The official said that "they need to be sending ships of wheat to the Persian Gulf, along with ships of soldiers."

As Bacon and Rupp explain:

The United States may be ready for war, but it is not yet ready to help Iraq recover from war.

For the first time in memory, Helen Thomas was not called upon to ask a question at a presidential press conference.

Thomas, who has covered the White House since the Kennedy Administration, is very critical of this president. In fact, she has called him "the worst president ever."

I am sure that had nothing to do with the snub. This president, after all, is known for his tolerance of opposing views.

Such pettiness. One wonders why people still do not understand why the press corps has given then Governor, and now President Bush such a free ride.

Payback. That's why.

(Thanks to Atrios for the link.)

I have been skeptical of the Bush Administration's war aims in Iraq for two reasons.

First, I think our nation is not prepared for the inevitable backlash. Our domestic security and public health services are not ready to protect our nation. Given that some terror response to an attack on Iraq seems like a good bet, such preparations are prudent.

Second, and more significantly, I do not believe the Bush Administration has been honest about either its justifications for going to war or in its planning for the war's aftermath.

President Bush, unfortunately, did it again in his press briefing last night. Bush once again tried to tie Saddam to Al Qaeda. He also talked in incredibly optimistic terms about the nation building to follow the war.

Let's look at the Al Qaeda link. Again. The Bush Administration has been trying to tie Saddam to Al Qaeda since September 12, 2001. But there remains no solid evidence that Saddam had anything to do with the terror attacks upon our country.

That did not stop the president from invoking Al Qaeda repeatedly. Here's one sample response:

I believe Saddam Hussein is a threat to the American people. I believe he's a threat to the neighborhood in which he lives, and I've got good evidence to believe that. He has weapons of mass destruction, and he has used weapons of mass destruction in his neighborhood and on his own people. He's invaded countries in his neighborhood. He tortures his own people. He's a murderer. He has trained and financed al Qaeda-type organizations before -- al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. I take the threat seriously, and I'll deal with the threat. I hope it can be done peacefully. (emphasis added)

Perhaps President Bush has reached the point where he has made, or his advisors have made, the Al Qaeda charge so often that now it appears true to them. Or perhaps the president has some evidence he has not yet shared with the American people.

Many of us have been screaming for the evidence. So, I'll do so. Again.

Taking a quick look at President Bush's intentions for the aftermath, we see him making an incredibly optimistic case. Here's one passage:

I'm convinced that a liberated Iraq will be -- will be important for that troubled part of the world. The Iraqi people are plenty capable of governing themselves. Iraq's a sophisticated society. Iraq's got money. Iraq will provide a -- a place where people can see that the Shiite and the Sunni and the Kurds can get along in a federation. Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change, a positive change So there's a lot more at stake than just American security and the security of people close by Saddam Hussein. Freedom is at stake as well. (emphasis added)

The White House wants to get Hussein. I have long argued that there may indeed be evidence or an argument that justifies this action while this nation is supposed to be focusing on a war against terrorism.

But trying to force, in the face of any evidence, a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda is simply not credible. Unless there is evidence that has not yet been shared with us. If there is evidence, it is well past time to share it. If there is no evidence, it is time to stop lying about a link that did not exist.

Analysts continue to reveal the negative impacts of the Bush Administration's misguided dividend tax cut strategy. Jan Breidenbach and Gordon Conway add another to the already lengthy list of reasons to oppose the White House economic plan:

The Bush administration's proposal to eliminate taxes on corporate dividends could have the unintended side effect of making affordable housing a less attractive investment for corporations.

Since 1986, the low income housing tax credit has given corporations and individuals a bottom-line incentive for investing in low- and moderate-income housing, to the tune of nearly $6 billion of new private capital for housing nationwide each year. It has become the nation's primary means of producing affordable housing and has resulted in more than 1 million new or renovated homes.

Jonathan Turley makes a troubling report in his column today:

In Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising to find two dead bodies with signs of torture. This week, however, a shocking U.S. military coroner's report also suggested that the most likely suspect in the homicides was the U.S. government. Even more disturbing is emerging evidence that the United States may be operating something that would have seemed unimaginable only two years ago: an American torture facility.

Credible reports now indicate that the government, with the approval of high-ranking officials, is engaging in systematic techniques considered by many to be torture.

Let's put aside, for the moment, the violations of the Geneva Convention. Or the moral arguments. For a nation preparing to go to war soon, torturing captured enemy agents is quite risky. As Turley notes, we are increasing the danger to any U.S. soldier captured in the future.

Worse, we are turning our backs on our nation's traditional (albeit imperfect) fights against torture and on behalf of human rights.

Instead of continuing our long fight against torture, we now seek to adopt more narrow definitions to satisfy our own acquired appetite for coercive interrogations. If the U.S. is responsible for the deaths of the two men in Afghanistan, it is more than homicide. It would be suicide for a nation once viewed as the very embodiment of human rights.

As noted in my previous post, the Concord Coalition and the Committee for Economic Development released a joint statement about the federal budget and our economic future.

The joint statement includes a statement of key points that I wanted to endorse and include here in full to emphasize the importance of stopping the White House's reckless fiscal policies.

Here are the key points about which CED and Concord agree:

• We emphatically insist that over the longer term deficits do matter.
  
  
• We believe that the fiscal outlook is worse than official projections indicate.
  
  
• We agree that it is important to reestablish a fiscal policy goal to prevent deficits from spiraling out of control.
  
  
• We further agree that the eventual goal should be to balance the budget without using the Social Security surplus, even as we recognize that this goal will take some time to achieve.
  
  
• We agree that in pursuing this goal, all options should be on the table — even the politically difficult option of scaling back or canceling some of the prospective tax cuts enacted in 2001.
  
  
• We agree that budget enforcement mechanisms, such as discretionary spending caps and the pay-as-you-go rule for tax and entitlement initiatives should be reinstated.
  
  
• We agree that the rate of appropriations growth should be curtailed but that it is unrealistic to assume large savings in this portion of the budget, given the need for higher defense and homeland security spending.
  
  
• We agree that today’s fiscal policy decisions should be made within a long-term context that accounts for the economic and budgetary consequences of the coming demographic transformation.
  
  
• We agree that entitlement reform is essential to ensuring a sustainable fiscal policy and that such reforms must include politically difficult choices to control costs.
  
  
• We agree that any attempt to provide short-term fiscal stimulus should not result in larger long-term deficits, and that the Administration’s new plan is problematic in that regard.”
  

The Committee for Economic Development, an independent, nonpartisan organization of business and education leaders, today released a report that:

"...urges the Administration and Congress to "wage war on many fronts" against our nation's deteriorating fiscal situation and set aside any effort to stimulate the economy through tax reductions at this time."

Broder quotes from the report in his column today. Both his column and this new report make many important points against this dangerous economic policy. Broder writes:

Deficits of this scale, over that many years, would spell economic peril at any time, the business executives say, because they reduce the pool of national savings, diminish needed investments and make us more dependent on foreign creditors.

But they are particularly dangerous at this moment, because in only five years, starting in 2008, the vanguard of the baby boomers will reach early retirement age and the demands on Social Security, Medicare and private health and retirement systems will rise dramatically.

The workforce is likely to grow barely at all in subsequent decades, thanks to continuing low birthrates, which means that overall economic growth will be limited. Meanwhile, lengthening life expectancy and the sheer number of boomers will cause retirement and health care costs to explode.

"Staying on our present track, spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid skyrockets, while revenues fail to keep pace. The federal government deficit would balloon," weakening an already poor savings rate, and "by the 2020s, per-capita income growth would have fallen by more than half, and by 2040 the model predicts growth rates very nearly zero. . . . Perhaps for the first time in this country's history, most Americans could no longer expect their children and grandchildren to have higher living standards than their own."

The joint statement also makes several important points. This one repeats a point quoted above in the Broder column, but I add it here because it requires emphasis.

Deficits do matter. They lower future economic growth by reducing the level of national savings that can be devoted to productive investments. They raise interest rates. They raise interest payments on the national debt. They reduce the fiscal flexibility to deal with unexpected developments. If we do not take action now to bring burgeoning deficits under control, we will create the first generation of Americans less well off than their predecessors.

Remember, this is an economic policy brought to you by a president who promised in his recent State of the Union that:

This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. (Applause.) We will confront them with focus and clarity and courage.

It is hard to imagine a more reckless policy.

Via Talkleft, here are the first three paragraphs of a Reuters story describing a new outrage.

A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.

According to the criminal complaint filed Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall," said Downs.

Wear a shirt in the same mall you made the purchase, go to jail. Welcome to the United States of America.

Here's some "happy" news with which to start the day. The New York Times' Edmund L. Andrews reports:

The federal deficit is growing much more quickly than expected, even before Congress takes up President Bush's tax-cutting proposals and without factoring in the costs of a war in Iraq, Congressional analysts have concluded.

There is a bit of good news in this dreary story. Andrews says that House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) is skeptical of the White House's "dynamic scoring" scheme. Under dynamic scoring, tax cuts are seen to pay at least in part for themselves thanks to increased economic growth.

The Congressional Budget Office is under pressure to change from its traditional methods to dynamic scoring. The CBO, in fact, is expected to score the president's latest tax cut proposals in both ways.

Nussle, however, makes a good point against the idea. He told Andrews:

"I'd rather be conservative in my projections," he said, "and be surprised by the positive rather than by the negative."

Sometimes even Republicans have to return to their roots. At least until they get that angry call from the White House and the new on-message talking points of the day.

James Pinkerton explains how similar President George Bush's world outlook is to former President Woodrow Wilson's.

He also wonders whether Bush will prove more successful than Wilson did in creating a new international vision.

Thomas Oliphant explores why neither Democrats nor Republicans want another full debate about our Iraq policy, even if heated discussions about it continue around the world. He writes:

The votes are not feared by the administration; in truth they are more feared by Democratic ''leadership'' figures not eager to force their colleagues on record. Many of these colleagues prefer to express doubts and criticism rather than face what the entire country is wrestling with from the Internet to their city councils -- an up-or-down choice.

If many congressional Democrats are happy to avoid votes, the Bush administration is just as devious. It fears the public debate that would have to precede votes in the House and Senate, when all those nagging questions (about inspections, cost, allies, post-ar plans, and other looming crises in places like North Korea) would get a public airing.

There's a ringing endorsement of the state of our Democratic Republic.

E.J. Dionne writes about some remarkable recent criticism of the Bush Administration's Iraq policies. These doubts are from Iraq hawks. For example:

It was remarkable last week that political officials at the Pentagon directly rebuked the Army's chief of staff for his estimate of the number of troops that would be required to occupy a postwar Iraq.

Gen. Eric K. Shinseki appeared to be giving his best candid estimate last Tuesday when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be necessary. But on Thursday Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described Shinseki's estimate as "way off the mark."

Which part of the government are we supposed to believe? Is the dispute between Shinseki and Wolfowitz about public relations -- about not scaring the public with too large an estimate of the war's cost? Or is there a difference in strategy?

I will emphasize again that the real problem with Iraq will arise in the aftermath of war. (I have little doubt in our military's ability to deal with Iraq.) Dionne notes, again, that the precedent set by this White House in Afghanistan is cause for concern.

In the meantime, the administration's acquiescence to warlord control of large parts of Afghanistan hardly builds confidence in its capacity to administer an Iraq devastated by years of cruel dictatorship and sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines. And by refusing to put a price tag on this war, the administration feeds perceptions that it is unwilling to sacrifice any of its domestic priorities, especially tax cuts, to build support for the largest foreign policy undertaking in four decades.

David Ignatius has some kind words about France's foreign policy and especially Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

While France's recent words against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are welcome, we must not forget that this is a recent conversion.

As France has been a strong supporter of Saddam over the years, I wonder just how much of a problem Iraq would be today if the French were more willing to act on their new ideals in the past?

Matt Drudge went with the red font with this story. Warren Buffett is very pessimistic about the world economy and has real concerns about the derivatives markets. He is going to tell his shareholders that banks in particular do not understand the risk.

Fortune magazine has posted a preview of Buffett's letter on its web site. He does not hold back when it comes to his derivatives conclusion:

Charlie and I believe Berkshire should be a fortress of financial strength--for the sake of our owners, creditors, policyholders, and employees. We try to be alert to any sort of mega-catastrophe risk, and that posture may make us unduly apprehensive about the burgeoning quantities of long-term derivatives contracts and the massive amount of uncollateralized receivables that are growing alongside. In our view, however, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.

Mickey Kaus asked an interesting question earlier today:

Why did we find out about the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed almost immediately after the event? Wouldn't it have been better to keep the arrest secret while the U.S. and its allies rolled up those al Qaeda operatives whose whereabouts could be traced through Mohammeds' cell phone and computer, etc.? Why send out a worldwide alert, through CNN, to his co-conspirators, telling them it was time to scatter? Did the need for good publicity trump sound anti-terror techniques?

Timothy Noah explains to what extent the United States could again sell out the Kurds during the aftermath of a war with Iraq. He notes:

The end result of a war fought partly to avenge Saddam's gassing of the Kurds would be to rob the Kurds of what little autonomy they enjoy today. They'd be worse off than they are now.

Just how misleading are the Bush Administration's average tax cut figures? Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Senior Fellow Isaac Shapiro explains how the averages cited by White House officials are skewed by the cuts earmarked for the top income brackets.

The New York Daily News rightly calls out the White House and Congress over the latest homeland security items included -- and not included -- in the recently passed omnibus budget bill.

We've been dissed. The Bloomberg administration requested $900 million in counterterrorism funding from the federal government. What it got was $4 million to buy some gas masks for the NYPD. There's a bitter lesson to be learned here: Congress has stopped giving a damn about New York City.

Thomas Friedman discusses how the Bush Administration's treatment of other nations is now coming back to haunt the White House as it embarks on its great Iraqi gamble. He writes:

What do I mean? I mean that if taking out Saddam and rebuilding Iraq had been my goal from the minute I took office (as it was for the Bush team), I would not have angered all of Europe by trashing the Kyoto global warming treaty without offering an alternative. I would not have alienated the entire Russian national security elite by telling the Russians that we were ripping up the ABM treaty and that they would just have to get used to it. (You're now seeing their revenge.) I would not have proposed one radical tax cut on top of another on the eve of a huge, costly nation-building marathon abroad.

Maureen Dowd accurately describes the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq debate:

After obscuring the real reasons for war, the Bushies are now obscuring the Pentagon's assessments of the cost of war ($60 billion to $200 billion?), the size of the occupation force (100,000 to 400,000?) and the length of time American troops will stay in Iraq (2 to 10 years?).

Unless you think the Democratic Republican form of government should offer its citizens the right to participate in policy discussions.

Think secret arrests are okay? Want to see the federal government's moves against civil liberties succeed? Then you better hope you do not wind up caught in a web of FBI and government mistakes like the recent case described in today's Cragg Hines' column:

When Derek Bond, a 72-year-old British retiree, landed in Cape Town, South Africa, in late January to begin a vacation, he handed his passport to an immigration officer. Because of institutionalized ineptitude on the part of U.S. officials, Bond might as well have put his head between his legs and kissed his holiday goodbye.

The horror story that unfolded for Bond over the next month is a cautionary tale as the Bush administration presses Congress to expand authorization for secretive arrests, unlimited detention and a curtailment of judicial review. And Bond's case didn't even involve terrorism, just what was apparently a stolen identity and incredible inattention by U.S. government officials, including some in Houston. The response of the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office so far has been acknowledgment that they screwed up and the cheeky suggestion that Bond's cooperation contributed to his predicament.

Robert Novak reports that the Bush Administration's long courtship of the Teamsters Union has failed.

Michael Hill writes about the Kurds, a wildcard in any war with Iraq and its aftermath.

As Hill notes, the Kurds have good reason to be suspect of any deal with a foreign power. He writes:

"They've been fairly regularly screwed throughout history," says Larry P. Goodson, director of Middle East studies at the U.S. Army War College. "That's kind of what you do if you work in the Middle East - before your career is over, make sure you screw the Kurds at least once."

The Washington Post's Kathy Sawyer and R. Jeffrey Smith present a troubling analysis of NASA's decisionmaking culture in a story examining the debate (or lack thereof) of the safety issues surrounding the Shuttle Columbia's flight.

No one knows for sure yet why the Columbia broke apart, killing its seven-person crew. But since the disaster, the space agency's decision to proceed as if nothing would go amiss is looking increasingly like a metaphor for a broader set of institutional failings, independent experts say.

In particular, a series of e-mails released by NASA in the past week and interviews with several key NASA officials make clear that the agency unquestioningly accepted technical analyses -- done by a contractor with a huge financial stake in the shuttle's success -- that concluded that the shuttle's heat shielding had not been dangerously damaged by debris that struck the left wing during launch. Officials also blocked efforts to search for information, such as photographic images, that might have conflicted with that analysis.

This is potentially good news. Reuters reports:

Pakistan said it had arrested the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, on Saturday in a major breakthrough in the international crackdown against Osama bin Laden's network.

Matt Miller is pleased that Democratic presidential hopefuls appear willing to make health care a major issue in the 2004 campaign. He writes:

All of which means that after vanishing from national debate after the Clintoncare fiasco a decade ago, America's 41 million uninsured will be on the agenda in the next presidential campaign. It's overdue; it's obviously important; and there will be time to cheer these revived ambitions. But before liberals get too excited, we ought to pause and mourn the idiocy through which Democrats managed to ignore the uninsured in 2000, when there were actually surpluses available to insure them.

Ambitious policy, in other words, is smart politics, because it's the only way to stop the president from successfully selling his faux compassion as if it held real answers to these challenges. And Bush can't offer real answers because they cost money - which means he'd have to scrap his tax cuts for the well-to-do.

These domestic contrasts will get lost in the likely war ahead. But with luck, war will be brief, and a triumphant Bush will return to push his misguided domestic priorities. Democrats need to be ready - they can't be cowed, or blow it again, due to self-inflicted lack of ambition.

Sally Jenkins writes about the controversy surrounding Manhattanville College women's basketball player Toni Smith's flag protest prior to her team's games:

If sports and politics don't mix, then we shouldn't play anthems in gyms.

You do not have to like what Smith is doing. But one of the supposed foundations of this nation is the right to free public expression of political views. Those who do not grasp that point do far more damage to this nation than Smith's turning away from the flag during the pregame anthem could ever do.